Say you have my currents setup. What do you upgrade??

[Travis]

Originally Posted by fronn

An 85 watt per channel receiver has plenty of power.

50 watt per channel has quite a bit of power to get extremely loud (louder than any reasonable person would want to listen).

The only reason he'd need a new receiver with new speakers is if the speakers are 4ohm or if he wants lossless. Let's not recommend he waste money on a 150+ WPC receiver when he has far more pressing upgrades to make.

There seems to be a misunderstanding around these forums as to how much power relates to actual listening levels.

A speaker with, let's say, a rather poor efficiency of 83db/W @1m and 8ohms is only going to need about 65 watts to get to 103db (generally 8ohms is around the low point - so it'd need even less power for much of time) - that's far louder than anyone should be listening to for anything but the briefest periods of time.

Question:

My AVR also puts out 85w/ch. I also want to upgrade fronts and center. For fronts (hoping for) B7W704s http://www.bowers-wilkins.com/displa...rid=1112&sc=ht or B&WCM7 (more likely) http://www.bowers-wilkins.com/displa...rid=1078&sc=ht would a 2ch amp bring out a better sound?

They both recommend a min. of 30 (or 50) to a max. of 150 watts into 8ohms for amp power.

I know specs aren't everyting, but it is all we can get sometimes. So what other specs are important at crunch time?